Tour the projects; meet the planners, designers, developers, citizens, and elected officials who made them happen (housing, mixed-use, and adaptive re-use of historic building).

Participants will tour innovative examples of “green” infill projects with the planners, architects, developers, citizens, and elected officials who made them possible. The first stop will be the Garver Building redevelopment project, which was nominated for a Great Places Planning Award in 2015.

This project is under construction. Weather and safety permitting, we will walk the grounds and tour the historic 60K square foot brick industrial building. When complete, this property will house a diversity of local food producers, meeting rooms, and a showcase of 50 “green” “micro-lodge/tiny houses,” which will be run like a bed & breakfast. Plans for this site include a “launchpad” for a national initiative to showcase and disseminate model codes for “green” residential infill, including tiny homes, accessory dwelling units, cohousing and micro-cohousing to municipal officials across the country.

The second stop will be the Madison Area Technical College (MATC), where we will tour model green micro-lodges, which were designed for installation at the new micro-lodge facilities at the Garver property and built in collaboration with the MATC construction technology program. Time and construction schedules permitting, we will briefly stop at infill sites that are, as of this writing, the proposed sites of an innovative mixed-income cohousing project and a pilot micro-cohousing project.

Our guest speakers and tour guides will answer questions about these green infill strategies, the codes, the code development process in Madison, public participation, design, public/private collaboration, and barriers to innovative infill, local and national, overcome and current. Faculty and students will find much fodder for research and willing “place-based” research partners.

State Street is a diverse, dynamic and iconic public space in Madison. Designed by M. Paul Friedberg in 1974, the 6-block transit and pedestrian corridor connects the State Capital to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. At its eastern end, the Capital Square is home to the largest outdoor farmers’ market in the country and the site of recent massive political protests. To the west, State Street forms the gateway to the UW campus—a confluence of food carts, bicyclists and pedestrians at the intersection of the East Campus Mall and the Library Mall.

The pedestrian-oriented streetscape derives its strong sense of place from a wide variety of land uses, including restaurants, bars, shops, apartments, performance venues, public art installations, and pocket parks. Likewise, its mix of shoppers, tourists, students, buskers, panhandlers, preachers, and demonstrators contribute to State Street’s unique urban vibe in this small Midwestern town.

Public debates over who is welcome on State Street and who is not (and by whom) highlight issues of social justice and equitable access to Madison’s premiere public space. This walking tour will focus on design responses to the competing visions for State Street.

Join landscape architect Ken Saiki, whose office undertook redesign of the Capital Square and State Street amid the many conflicting claims to these public spaces. Stops along the tour include Capital Park, Peace Park, Philosopher’s Grove, and the 600-700 Block on the UW Campus.

Participants should be prepared to cover about 1.5 miles over several hours outdoors. Participants are expected to find their own way back to the conference venue.

Taliesin (Spring Green, WI) is the home, studio, school, and 800-acre agricultural estate of Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright built Taliesin on his favorite boyhood hill in the Wisconsin River valley homesteaded by his Welsh grandparents and named it Taliesin in honor of the Welsh bard whose name means “Shining Brow.”

The Taliesin estate was his laboratory of organic architecture, with designs from nearly every decade of Wright’s life. The Taliesin residence is the heart of these buildings that Wright designed and modified from 1897 to 1959, including the Romeo & Juliet Windmill, Hillside School, Tan-y-Deri, Midway Barn, and the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center. These are among the reasons Taliesin is often described as Frank Lloyd Wright’s autobiography in wood and stone (description from the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation).

Participants will be expected to leave Monona Terrace immediately after the plenary session and gather outside for the shuttle bus. The bus will leave promptly at 11:45 am so participants can arrive in a timely manner for the tour starting at 1:00 pm in Taliesin. Please be advised that you will be expected to eat your boxed lunch on the bus as there will be limited time once we arrive on site. Participation on this tour is capped at 56 and participants will be assigned on a first-come, first served basis, so do sign up as soon as possible if you want to take advantage of this tour!